First Motion Picture House Ethiopian Food

Five days ago, my friend K. and I made three Ethiopian dishes. We used these recipes, roughly: (1) http://allrecipes.com/recipe/ethiopian-cabbage-dish/; (2) http://www.ethiopianrestaurant.com/recipes.html; (3) http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1364702. I also made banana bread using this recipe, subbing spelt flour and cornmeal for the the all-purpose flour, and coconut oil and sunflower seed oil for canola (way better!): http://dairyfreecooking.about.com/od/breadsbakery/r/vegan_banana_bread_recipe.htm.

April 14 is also the day the first commercial motion picture house opened (1894, NYC). It sported ten Kinetoscopes, which were cabinets with a window for viewing films that were played by a strip of perforated film passing over a lamp with a high-speed shutter. Must have been a small theater! I wonder if there was popcorn for sale. I wonder if people hung out and talked about the films. I wonder how long the longest film they showed was. The shortest, too. I wonder how expensive each film was, and if they were priced differently depending on anticipated demand. I wonder how many workers the theater employed. I wonder who owned the theater. I wonder how long it was in business. I wonder how many children went to the theater. I wonder when the last person with a memory of the theater died.

McMartin Preschool Ritual Satanic Abuse Trial Tacos

On March 22, 1984, teachers and administrators at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, CA were charged with sexual abuse of children, as well as various bizarre things like "flying through the air." Well, that probably wasn't a formal charge, but it was nonetheless claimed by a mother of one of the kids that one of the teachers, Ray Buckey, could fly. Incredible, yet not incredible, that the most expensive criminal trial in US history began with the unbelievable allegations of one woman, Judy Johnson, who suffered from acute paranoid schizophrenia and who died from complications of chronic alcoholism before the preliminary hearing concluded. The whole thing is really confusing and sad. Ray Buckey spent five years in prison without ever being convicted. Hard to imagine how angry and mangled I'd be if that happened to me. Imagine too, how hard it must be for young black men in this country to resist the inheritance of rage due them after years trapped in a racist, oppressive judicial system. Not sure why that turn happened. I intended to stay on track and make a couple of quips about Satanism.

The taco on the left is by far superior to the taco on the right. I had no idea how to cook cactus; I still have no idea.

INGREDIENTS

tortillas

6 oz. Baby Bella mushrooms, sliced

1/2 bundle watercress, chopped

1 cactus "leaf," scraped and chopped

cumin

coriander

1/2 green cabbage, sliced

4 red potatoes, peeled and cubed

nutritional yeast

DIRECTIONS

1. Boil potatoes and cabbage in a pot until tender.

2. Saute mushrooms, watercress, and cactus until the cactus is no longer slimy. Season with cumin and coriander and salt.

3. Serve with salsa or hot sauce.

Birth of Bishop Berkeley Bandelion Boup

Bishop Berkeley was born exactly 326 years before I made this soup, at home in a castle. I'll leave it to you to resolve the ambiguity of that sentence. Berkeley (pronounced "Barkley") is best known for writing this crazy book of philosophy called A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, which I haven't read in years but which I remember fondly as basically espousing a theory that the world is strictly perceptual, metaphysically speaking. As in, the computer I'm typing on right now doesn't exist at all independent of a perceptual apparatus. If I were to turn my back on the computer in an otherwise empty room, it would cease to exist if it weren't for God's omnipresent virtual gaze, the world being held in his mind's eye at all times. There's something unnervingly relevant and penetrating about a seventeenth-century reduction of ontology to the mere two categories ideas and spirits. Welcome to the internet.

This dandelion soup is an imitation of a soup my friend E. made a while back. It is not as good as hers and I don't know why. I think it might be because I used too much water and not enough oil and salt. Possibly the dandelion-to-cabbage ratio should be lower.

serves: 3-4

prep. time: approx. 30 min.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb. soft tofu, cubed

1 bundle dandelion leaves, chopped

1/2 green cabbage, sliced

water

garam masala

allspice

salt

1/2 bulb garlic, minced

some kind of seed oil

DIRECTIONS

1. Boil the vegetables and tofu in a pot of water. Season.

2. Once the cabbage is soft, transfer the soup in batches to a blender and liquefy.

3. Saute the garlic briefly in oil. Drizzle (or rather pour) over each bowl of soup.

A review of Gerhard Richter Painting.
A video of cows and a CEO.